François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government-elect hasn’t been sworn in yet, let alone faced the National Assembly. And already, its proposed hijab-and-kippah ban is unravelling like the proverbial cheap sweater, every time somebody picks at another loose thread.
The CAQ would forbid provincial government employees in “positions of authority,” including teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work, such as the head scarf worn by some Muslim women and the skullcap worn by some Jewish men.
The proposal is popular. In a poll by the Angus Reid Institute before the Oct. 1 election, 70 per cent of Quebec voters supported it, 47 per cent strongly.
But since the election, in another example of the improvisation that characterized Legault’s campaign, even the CAQ seems uncertain as to whether its ban would apply to present employees as well as new hires.
And the closer you look at the proposal, the more loose threads you see.
A La Presse editorial helpfully suggested to the CAQ that it “extend a hand” to religious minorities with a “grandfather clause” ensuring that present employees would not lose their jobs because of the ban.
This would benefit the CAQ, by avoiding the bad “optics” (ugh) of, say, tearful teachers being fired. Individuals discouraged from applying for a job in the first place would be less visible on the television news.
But they would still be victims of discrimination in hiring. Some extended hand.
And the government would still violate a fundamental freedom. The CAQ has conceded as much by saying it would invoke the rarely used “notwithstanding” clause in the constitutional Charter of Rights and Freedoms to override protection of freedom of religion if necessary, which it almost certainly would be.
So, Quebec would be the first jurisdiction in North America to violate freedom of religion by discriminating in employment against minorities. This might damage the province’s reputation in the rest of this continent.
And for what? The ban would not achieve the CAQ’s stated objective of a “secular” Quebec.
The CAQ has vowed to keep the Catholic crucifix in its place of honour above the speaker’s chair in the legislative chamber where the province’s laws are made.
To Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, a word “means just what I choose it to mean.” The Quebec variation applies to symbols.
Legault this week repeated the argument that the crucifix in the Assembly is no longer a religious symbol, but now is a historical one.
Again making it up as he goes along, Legault added a new wrinkle: the crucifix represents the role of British Protestants as well as French Catholics in the province’s history.
That the crucifix is a Protestant symbol may have been a revelation to Protestants. But if you accept the Legault doctrine that a symbol means whatever you find convenient, then government employees who wear religious symbols can simply argue, as the premier-designate says of the crucifix, that they’re not really religious symbols at all.
The absurdity doesn’t end there. If the CAQ accepted the suggestion of a grandfather clause for the ban, it could take more than 40 years to eliminate the wearing of religious symbols by government employees, until the last of those who now wear them retired.
Nor would the ban achieve another CAQ objective, of finally settling the “reasonable accommodations” debate in Quebec after more than a decade.
The ban would not affect the many other forms of religious accommodation. And it would inevitably be challenged in court.
> La suite sur le Montreal Gazette.
